Conventional fiber networks for local telephony receive data from local transmitters. Each of the local transmitters sends data frames that are time division multiplexed (TDM) onto the network. Each transmitter sends optical data using high power, and high cost, planar Fabry-Perot laser diodes. The high cost is due, in part, to the fiber alignment tolerances between the planar laser and the optical fiber.
A conventional fiber network allocates a portion of the upstream frame interval for transmission of initialization packets. The portion of the upstream frame interval allocated for initialization packets is usually equal to the round trip propagation time of the network. If the round trip time is long, the frame times must be extended, thereby increasing voice latency.
The conventional networks allow new transmitter nodes to be added to the network. When a new node is detected, a ranging algorithm is performed to determine where, physically and temporally, the node resides relative to a headend in the network. The new node is assigned a timer value, which it decrements with its local clock, to determine when to transmit. Because the timer must be able to build out the temporal position of the node over an entire frame time, and because the frame time is in part dependent on the round trip propagation time, the build out timer can get quite large depending on the temporal resolution requirements of the resulting system.